


Chane discovers some distances can be bridged.

by Barkour



Series: Red All Over [2]
Category: Baccano!
Genre: 1930s, Canon - Anime, F/M, Post-Canon, Romance, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-14
Updated: 2010-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-12 16:21:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Be easier to ask why don't I love you," he said, cheerful. "Shorter list, you know."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chane discovers some distances can be bridged.

**Author's Note:**

> Post-series; they're dating.

Together, they walked through the park. The path was thin; it wandered aimless through the trees. Claire's arm brushed her own, his forearms bare, the light hairs ruddy in the shade. The knife at her hip steadied her.

At a bend in the path, young, lean trees framed a bench set aside in a nook.

"You, uh, you wanna sit a while?" said Claire, following her gaze. He ducked his head a little to look at her. She turned to him, raising her chin.

The sun glinted, half-set, through the trees. The fading light caught sparks in his hair. With the sun at his back, his eyes were dark, more red than brown.

Chane nodded.

Claire swept fallen leaves from the bench. She gathered her skirts, the blue as black in the advancing twilight hour, and sat gracefully upon the edge. Claire sat to her left, too near. The bench had been placed for sweethearts, perhaps; it was not very wide.

Chane looked to her skirts, drawn together at her knees. Claire crossed his legs, then thought better of it and crossed his legs away from her. He set his hand down upon the bench between them. His cheeks were red. She supposed hers were, too. She smoothed her skirts over her thighs, feeling for the comforting line of her knife beneath the cloth.

"You sure I won't get in any trouble for keeping you out so late?" said Claire. "I mean, it's getting awful dark out. Young woman like you, alone in the park, maybe with some kind of maniac..."

Chane closed her eyes, then opened them with deliberate slowness, looking at him sidelong through her lashes. Claire laughed. It was a good thing he found his jokes funny, she told him with the tip of her chin, the faint pursing of her lips. But a smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.

Claire settled. His hip pressed against hers, the hilt of her knife hard between them. He wasn't bothered. The flat of the blade, secured within its holster, pressed her thigh. He leaned back, deeper into the shadows thick beneath the trees.

"I was thinking," he said. "I got some business on Friday needs taking care of, but if you wanna do something this weekend, I got time. We could go to Coney Island, or if you wanna see a movie, we could do that, too." He smiled at her, then frowned. "You're not sick of me, right? You need more space?" He sat upright. His eyes were wide, earnest. "If you need more space, you just let me know and I'll give you all the space you want."

So near, he sat, but there in the dark, on that little bench for sweethearts, she felt as if a great distance had opened between them. The sun had gone at last, the day done. Claire watched her, waiting.

Earlier, he had held her hand in his as they crossed a street. He'd swept his thumb across her knuckles, but when she pulled her hand away upon the far curb, he had only said, "Let's get some pasta. I'm starving. You wanna get some pasta?"

Chane looked back to him. Claire smiled again, his face pale, his hair a dull flame.

Why? she thought. Her tongue was still.

Lightly, Chane touched her fingers to his breast. His heart beat like a distant drum, soft against her hand. She looked to him, her lips flat, her brow knit.

Claire caught her hand. He slid his fingers down her wrist, then up again, to cradle her fingers in his palm. "Be easier to ask why don't I love you," he said, cheerful. "Shorter list, you know."

Chane shook her head. She tightened her fingers in his grasp. Please, she said.

Claire tipped his head like a sparrow. The whites of his eyes gleamed. "All right," he said. "For your consideration." He held her hand, still. He straightened his chin.

"Well, first I thought I was in love with you 'cause of the way you held that knife of yours--" He nudged her leg so the outline of her knife bit into his own thigh. He grinned at her, a lean, edged smile, itself a blade.

"Then I thought maybe it was 'cause of how you looked when you went after that white suit, your face like stone and the moon all in your hair--" The words caught, too quick, tangling on his tongue. Overcome, he sighed. "Or maybe it was how you looked when I came at you. You woulda tried to kill me. Really tried."

The way he said it, as if it were something sweet to whisper in her ear, brought the blood hot to her face, thick in her chest. He'd stood before her on the train, skin blood-slicked and suit red with it, the point of her knife trained on his heart.

"Or maybe," said Claire, "it's how you talk in your silences, or how you walk. You have a real unique way of walking, you know that? Nobody walks like you. I bet I could pick you out of a crowd just on how you walk."

Chane looked down to her feet, the silver bow on each heeled shoe gleaming. She curled her toes. They twinged, pinched within her shoes.

"There's a lot of other things," he went on, "but I started thinking maybe it wasn't just how you walk or the way you cut a guy's throat open or how you don't laugh at my jokes, but all of those things together. It's not 'cause of any one thing that I love you, but because of everything!" He gestured violently. "I guess what I'm trying to say is, I love you because you're Chane."

She looked up from her toes to meet his eyes, black now in the thickening night. He smiled at her. The calluses on his palm were warm against her fingers.

He loved her for her, he said. But she did not understand. She had given him nothing. She had not offered him allegiance. She had not sworn herself to protect him, or given of herself to make him happy. Something inside her yearned; something she would not allow herself to think of yawned wide, longing. He was so near to her. The trees above them were dark, swollen with night, and the world bent with them, holding Chane and Claire and no one else at all.

"How about you?" he said. He was smiling still. Teasing, or shy. "What about me makes you think, hey, I could love that guy?"

She studied him. Claire, with his square face and his red hair, his workman's hands thick with calluses, blood dried beneath the nail of the smallest finger of his left hand. He talked too much and when he laughed, it sounded in his nose. For killing, he preferred what he described as a hands-on approach. He liked romantic films. He loved her for her.

He waited for her now. She spread her fingers in his hand, across his palm. Her heart beat, steady.

Chane turned her hand so that she held his, then she leaned toward him and kissed him once, dryly, upon his cheek. She lingered a moment there. His cheek was warm and he smelled like tomato sauce and sunlight and ash. His hair tickled her brow.

She pulled away. She held his hand in her lap. She kept her gaze even, looking into his eyes even as her heart quickened and her fingers tightened upon the back of his hand.

He blinked. "Oh," said Claire. He cleared his throat. "So that's why."

He smiled at her then, slow and wondering, the sort of smile that lit his face like a child's on Christmas.

Chane smiled, too.


End file.
